(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an installation support method and a workflow generation support method, which can reduce the burden on a user who installs a new application program and generates a new workflow.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In the technical field of document processing devices having functions of a scanner, a copier, a printer, a FAX and so on (e.g. MFP: Multi Function Peripheral), many kinds of application programs (hereinafter simply called “applications”) to process documents have been developed in recent years.
Many configuration values are used for configuring such applications, and the user usually customizes the values according to his/her purpose and preference. Such applications are often updated in order to add or improve functions, or to fix bugs.
However, if an update (especially a major update) to the application is installed, the configuration values are usually replaced by the default values of the update.
This means that the configuration values, which the user took a long time to set, are will be reset. To obtain the same configuration, the user has to manually set the configuration values again.
Some users dislike changing the configuration because of the heavy workload of setting the configuration again after finishing the installation. They often use the previous version and avoid installing the update. This hinders the diffusion of the update.
In the case where a new application similar to an application which has been already installed (hereinafter called the “existing application”) is installed, it is preferable that the configuration of the existing application is inherited by the new application.
By the way, the inventors of the present invention have been developing a workflow system that performs a plurality of procedures, which are linked together, for processing a document.
To newly generate a workflow used in this system, the user has to define each node constituting the workflow.
Especially, if the workflow is for performing procedures by transferring data among a plurality of devices, the burden on the user increases because the user has to define many items for each node.